The letter said only: YOU HAVE BEEN TOUCHED in a simple, austere typeface. The paper was a heavy stock, no watermark. The envelope it had come in was blank; no return address, no postmark. It had obviously been hand-delivered, but there were also no prints. The letter itself was an enigma. And everyone who had received one—seven, so far—was dead.

Detective Maia Chase was examining the letter inside a sealed polybag. The lab had come up negative on any infectious agents; known ones, at least. and the bizarre thing was that all the victims had died of different things: heart attack, stroke; all natural causes. But that's what was so unnatural; the ages varied wildly. Some were in their 60s, some in their 20s, and, Christ, even a young kid. As far as they could tell, the child had been home at the time the letter was delivered, and, absent any addressive information, the boy thought it was for him. And now there was an otherwise healthy 6-year-old dead from a stroke.

The phone rang. Maia groped for it, intent on the letter, checking for fibers, identifying marks, anything. She put the receiver to her ear: "Chase." The voice that came through the line was like none she had ever heard—like nothing she had ever heard. "yOU gOt My lETTeR. i'M ToUChEd. YoU HaVe 24 hOUrs." There was a click and the line was dead. Chase's attention was drawn away from the letter and she noticed the time: 12:01AM. On Halloween.

"This is bullshit." Maia thought. "I'll deal with it tomorrow, in the clear light of day."

And she finished her drink, threw the cat out the door, dropped the cover on the parakeet, turned down the thermostat, and climbed the stairs to her sleeping loft, where a fresh set of "C" batteries was waiting.

She then ate the batteries in hopes of having an acid trip.

The room started to spin as the batteries began to take effect. Before her eyes the mysterious paper seemed to grow and change shapes. Evil eyes appeared on the creamy white face of the letter, the lettering moving about on their own. They seemed to become a face, a vaguely familiar face....

It was the face of Uncle Hoosier, a local television celebrity, the one doing all the PSA's about curfew and vegetable intake.